Those still holding on to their Apple Vision Pros may remain in a rather exclusive club throughout this year. Market research shows that sales for Apple’s first big, expensive headset will remain low in 2024. The latest reports from those keeping tabs on the Cupertino, California company say AVP will have dropped off 75% by the end of August. The true test for Apple’s spatial dreams may rest on the rumored (slightly) cheaper headset.
A super expensive headset with no software didn’t sell well? Who would have thought? Sony did the same shit with the same outcome. Even Meta stopped making games and is now watching their sales tank.
Every company wants to make a headset so they can get rich but not a single one is making software that anyone wants. And they don’t understand the gaming industry apparently so they try to offer productivity and AR bullshit. What people want for a VR headset is games and porn. Why is that so hard to understand?
Steam gets it. I don’t love them, but they get it.
When did Meta stop making games? Pretty sure they still have many of their studios working on stuff, Asgard’s wrath was the only one they released half a year ago.
I find Apple‘s “general purpose VR” approach interesting, but I don’t think it’s going to fly right now, as you said: gaming is the main use case so far and Apple‘s not playing along. Even if they were, I don’t know if it made a huge difference, it would still have a tiny market size with expensive hardware.
Perhaps it’s just a lack of marketing then. I’m not aware of anything new since AC. And there didn’t seem to be much before that. Did San Andreas ever come out? I bailed on their platform after a year so if they’re only pushing ads to their own headsets I haven’t seen em.
Steam is where all the good games are. Any headset that doesn’t support it is basically doomed. At least in the adult market.
There are plenty of games coming out; it’s just that Meta isn’t making them themselves. So far in 2024, we have Underdogs, Medieval Dynasty, Riven, Mudrunner, Max Mustard, Ghosts of Tabor, Contractors Showdown, and many more.
Upcoming games include Skydance’s Behemoth, Batman Arkham Shadow, Hitman 3, Metro Awakening, and Alien Rogue Incursion.
I’m pretty sure Quest is where the money is, as it has the most users.
Quest is indeed where the money is at. But most (all?) of those games are also on Steam and look a hell of a lot better.
My point is that Meta isn’t really offering anything compared to what you get with other headsets. Sure they were the clear winner in the Quest 2 days but now, not so much.
Batman and Hitman are exclusive, but I think it’s great that studios take the time to port games to multiple platforms. Games have always looked much better on PC/PSVR, but it’s both more expensive and, most importantly, more friction to play that way.
What Meta currently has is being the clear number one in standalone VR – the platform that most people prefer.
I think Meta’s problem now is now that their headset is no longer super cheap. The Q3 is double the price of the Q2. It’s no longer a cheap toy you could buy on a whim.
Its kind of left the PC without a super cheap headset as well.
Bad news for VR tbh. I was hoping the PS2VR PC dongle might do it, but it sounds like they’ve gutted it for PC users.
It definitely seems like sales are much much lower with the 200 bucks Q2/Q3 difference. Q2 is still fine for PC and even cheaper than before.
I don’t see the PSVR PC dongle doing anything or almost anyone.
There’s a cheaper version of Q3 coming soon to plug that hole on the market.
It’s not a lack of software that killed it, it’s the lack of ability to use any meaningful library of software due to proprietary restraints, as always. I don’t know when everyone made the switch from VR as a peripheral to strictly proprietary, “stand-alone” (and die alone) headsets, but it’s literally killing VR as a whole.
Don’t get me wrong, the current strict PCVR companies aren’t any better. They see what’s happening and are doubling down on the massive cost hike despite looking shittier and technically having less features than SA headsets. That being said, they work INFINITELY smoother with PC apps and game and movies, in addition to higher quality tracking systems and third-party hardware support. This alone should put them ahead by a long-shot, but being an unaffordable hobby niche doesn’t help when large corpos can churn out headsets full of “stand-alone” bloat at a loss just to devour the majority of the VR market and lock people into hopeless, proprietary hellscapes.
Wow, you mean jacking the price up fucking 7x that of your competitors for about the same or less capability, just because you made the screen resolution slightly higher, isn’t a sound business decision? Why do these people still exist, lol
Usually, I’d say what Apple does best is make a compelling and polished product. If you simply compare hardware stats, you’re not telling the entire story.
In this case, however, I kind of agree. Visually and with its eye-tracking-based input, it’s a huge step up, but it falls short in many other areas: it’s hilariously expensive, uncomfortable to wear, has a tethered battery, and basically no VR game support due to the lacking controller input.
There isn’t a good enough reason to actually put on the headset. Most, if not all, of the things it does are easier done on a screen – only the VP has a lot more friction and is uncomfortable. From the unique things it does – 3D videos and VR games – there isn’t a lot of content.
Which is exactly my point. They cater to people who want the shiniest ‘new’ thing with a sense of faux class to it, and will strip some pretty fucking bare-bones features in place of “polish”. Such a stupid, meaningless word to excuse a complete and utter lack of anything of substance.
90% of the apps and games that got people interested in VR aren’t even compatible, and you KNOW they never will be. What the fuck else are you gonna do with this $3500 toy? Read emails and watch full-priced movies on iTunes? BUT MAN IT’S LIKE TOUCH SCREEN, BUT EVERYWHERE AND IN REAL LIFE! There’s nothing here. ‘Polish’ isn’t a real thing. It’s a cherry-on-top adjective for something that already has inherent value, it isn’t something of real value in its self.
Sorry man, I gotta go off on this ‘compelling and polished’ thing. Apple does maybe one “compelling” thing per decade, but even that seems like a thing of the past now. They’ve been riding the one-trick-pony that is the touch-screen smartphone for fucking ever now, and as amazing as people think it is to have a powerful computer in the palm of your hand, it’s contributed shockingly little beyond making the cell phone A. societally mandatory for everyone, and B. MASSIVELY expensive compared to what could have been.
Now sure, it’s slightly more convenient to pay for parking and complete rudimentary “productivity” tasks that you might need your laptop for, but that can be accomplished with much less. About the most “compelling” thing this technology has contributed to the world is the ability to endlessly doomscroll through funny little pictures and videos, with some REALLY sub-par and barely-tolerable games to make your city transit commute feel almost bearable. No, it’s not going to get any better, they’ve had WAY too long. It’s not going to happen now.
[…] “polish”. Such a stupid, meaningless word to excuse a complete and utter lack of anything of substance.
“Polish” is far from meaningless, it can make or break products. It’s the difference between having something that’s fun and easy to use and something that’s annoying and a pain to use. Focusing on core features can be a great if the alternative is having tons of features where non of them work.
[‘Polish’ is] a cherry-on-top adjective for something that already has inherent value, it isn’t something of real value in its self.
I agree, polish isn’t worth anything if there’s nothing to be polished. The things VP does do are way nicer compared to the Quest, but in no way does that make it worth its money. There should be more VR/3D content and unique use-cases.
What the fuck else are you gonna do with this $3500 toy? Read emails and watch full-priced movies on iTunes?
That’s my point, these things are easier and more comfortable to do on other screens. If, one day, we have a glasses form factor it might worth $3500 to do the exact same things in a “spacial” way – on a big screen without you even having to pull out a phone.
They’ve been riding the one-trick-pony that is the touch-screen smartphone for fucking ever now
Basically everyone is, I don’t think we have a more compelling form factor yet and I don’t see XR replacing that anytime soon.
No, it’s not going to get any better, they’ve had WAY too long. It’s not going to happen now.
It’ll definitely get better, the question is if it’ll be enough to make it a compelling product.
Completely disagree with you here, and you really didn’t explain any of it. In what way does the apple face-book-mac whatever the fuck do things “way nicer” than any other headset? I get that the resolution is objectively higher than the mid-to-low end sets, but a complete lack of actual features negates that. Does the UI just have super silky animations? Transparent icons? A really sexy audio cue when you boot it up? All of this is fluff to make people feel like they made a good purchase decision.
I’m almost certain that you’ve been using this little “polish” phrase for years to justify being an Apple stan without thinking about it. You see literally any other option as the intimidating, lifted-truck meany that doesn’t appreciate that mirror shine on the back of your phone.
And yeah, most people are fresh-out of innovation. That’s besides the point, and you know it. Apple is included on that lineup, and they’re furious that someone else came up with VR and they somehow let the market create a variety of products before they could reliably gimmick the fuck out of it like they always do. Your turtle-neck fruit daddy died a long time ago, no one has any business considering Apple a respectable company anymore.
Not even sure what you disagree on or what your problem is. You seem to think that I’m a huge fan of the Vision Pro, which I’m not. I find the visual quality and interaction to be miles ahead of the Quest, it’s also more of a general purpose device – but I don’t think it matters, as it’s still not a compelling product overall. The Quest is great at gaming, which is my and probably most people’s main use-case for VR.
I propose the solution for this: make another VR headset that is double the price. Ta-daam.
This is triple-priced in even the most generous case, and 7x higher than the Quest 3.
There were two paths for their AR roadmap: -Big-to-small: Macbook -Small-to-feature-rich: Apple Watch
They decided to follow the big-to-small strategy, and pretty much strapped a Macbook on people’s faces.
I have a sneaking suspicion that a $4,000 faceputer wasn’t designed to sell. It was designed to have patents on the tech so when militaries buy zillions of some future product, Apple gets a slice.
You can file patents for things without producing them. Apple does it all the time.
Apple isn’t really a military contract/industrial complex type, they’re more the removed, pretentious rich people and removed poor-ish people who think they’re rich because they saved 15% or more on Geico type.
Quack!
What?
What sort of tech-illiterate idiot owns a Apple Vision Pro? All of them with more money than sense.
Oooohhhb I cant wait for this AI AR future they keep promising us is right around the corner.
Can’t wait to spend my money in it.
